Champions
by Arrowwood15
Summary: Just a series of one-shots that I'll work on when I'm bored. Don't expect too much from a product of boredom. Rated T because paranoia.
1. Struggle

**Let me address a few things first. This is a side project I've been working on, while I try to finish my ultimate mark on the fanfiction world, as I like to call it. At least I hope. I just recently completed Breath of the Wild with the true ending, and I really wanted to expand Revali's character. The game made him look like a pompous jerk and nothing else. When I watched the memory with him and Link, I immediately wanted to put him in a situation where he would be uncomfortable or unsure of what to do. On the other hand, I figured Mipha would be perfect for this, as it seemed to me if anyone would get through to Revali, it would be her. All of these stories take place before the the return of Calamity Ganon.**

 **Without further ado, enjoy the story.**

"I can't believe the princess actually trusts that whelp with her life," Revali muttered.

"Oh, can it already, Revali," Urbosa snapped, waving her hand. "There's nothing we can do."

The Rito ruffled his feathers in outrage. They were sitting in a stable, of all places. The Dueling Peaks stable, to be exact. They had walked up to one of the stablemasters, who took one look at them and gave them a small table, some chairs, and a promise of food if they asked for it. They were making what Daruk called a 'victory tour' of every major location in Hyrule, so now they were on their way to Kakariko. Zelda and her… chosen hero were, as far as Revali knew, praying at sacred springs.

"Have you met Link yet?" Mipha asked. She looked very out of place in the cramped stable, where the thick smell of smoke and horses choked the air. She kept glancing out the open door at the rain falling gently outside, clearly wishing she was somewhere else.

"Of course I have," Revali growled in reply. "He's only _the most important person_ in _all of Hyrule_ and _I should be ashamed of myself if I hadn't._ "

Mipha said nothing.

"I don't know why you're getting so worked up about this," Daruk interrupted in his deep, loud voice that filled the room as suddenly as an earthquake. "I consider it an honor to be one of the princess's Champions. We get giant robots! What could possibly be wrong with that?"

"We're all saying basically the same thing," Mipha said quietly. "Link is the hero, not any of us, and we should try to accept that."

"Easy for you to say!" Revali nearly shouted at Mipha. "You loved him from the start! I know that your jealous of him and the princess, but you hide it to keep up your stupid purity and innocence shtick!"

He regretted the words even as he spoke them. The Zora looked up at him with wide, misty eyes for a moment, then hid her face and fled out into the rain.

As he was watching her, he felt his arm being slammed into the table. Urbosa was pinning him down with one hand, even as he struggled against her, and was reaching for her sword with the other. He got a good look at the dangerous glint in her eerily golden eyes as she crushed his wing beneath her palm.

"WHOA! WHOA!" Daruk cried. He tore Urbosa off of Revali and grabbed her arm before she could leap at him. "Hey! Calm down. Look, I agree he shouldn't have gone there, but how are we going to fight Calamity Ganon if we keep fighting each other?"

Urbosa snatched her arm away and walked out the door with her usual poise and confidence, without so much as a glance back at the two other champions. Daruk leaned back in his chair with a heavy, exasperated sigh. He looked at Revali, opened his mouth, and closed it again, shaking his head sadly. "Not cool, brother. Not cool."

Then the Goron, too, got up and lumbered off, not before stopping at the desk and placing a blue rupee on it.

Revali was left to ponder alone. He was used to prying at people's weaknesses and using them to his advantage. Urbosa did it too. Mipha was apposing him, so naturally he had to give a counterargument. Right? That's all it was. A counterargument.

 _Not that I care about what the Zora thinks,_ he told himself. _She doesn't matter to me any more than anyone else does._ But even so, he found himself taking to the air as soon as he was out in the open. Behind the stable was a large, open field with a river running along one of the edges. If Mipha was anywhere, she would be in there. The rain had receded to a light drizzle, and he could fly, for the most part, but his wing stung from where Urbosa had pinned it. Speaking of Urbosa, he could see her and Daruk, standing near each other, seemingly talking. Daruk glanced up and saw Revali, but Urbosa put a hand out, stopping him. She gave Revali a look that, even from a distance, conveyed too many things for him to comprehend.

With that, he flew off, following the river. He had to fly very close to it in order to actually see anything below the surface. He traced it back to its origin, a waterfall pouring out of a cliff with a decently-sized stone outcropping around it. Sitting on the outcropping was a small raspberry-colored shape. As he got closer, he could see that she had her face in her hands and was shaking slightly. As he realized this, he felt a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach that he had only felt one other time, on the day his mother was killed.

He hesitated about six feet away from the platform for a moment, before alighting a foot away from Mipha. He stood there, not sure what to do, then settled on sitting down beside her, his feet dangling over the dizzying drop below them. Mipha didn't respond to him at all.

How much had he hurt her? He knew Mipha was sensitive, of course she was, she was a healer. But maybe the subject of Link had been a little more sore than he first thought. Or maybe… maybe he hit a little too close to home.

"Daruk and Urbosa are looking for you," he said flatly. How else was he supposed to start the conversation? Somehow the words "I'm sorry" seemed meaningless.

"I know," she said quietly, without taking her face out of her hands.

"I, uh…" apologizing was not Revali's specialty. Usually he just got away with whatever he said. This was new to him, actually having consequences for his words and not his actions. Perhaps the line between the two was not as thick as he had thought.

"You've come to apologize, haven't you?" her voice had become suddenly monotone.

"I- yes. But it's not as much of an apology… as it is a confession."

She looked up at him. Unlike Hylians or Gerudo, when a Zora or Rito cries, the only evidence of it is whatever tear-stains are left. With humans, their faces got all puffy and disgusting. Mipha's face showed no signs of it, but the look in her eyes said enough.

Revali sighed and trained his eyes on a horse in the field down below, refusing to look at her. "Don't expect me to say this often, but… I was wrong. I made a mistake. I can say it in as many ways as you want, but it won't change what I did. And… well… I'm sorry."

She didn't say anything, and for those few seconds he could hear his heart pounding in his throat. "Words are a strange thing, are they not?" she mused. "They're almost like monsters. Twenty can attack you head-on, but as long as you're skilled, you can kill them all easily. But just one strong, or clever, or cruel monster is enough to break anyone."

"I was that one monster," Revali replied.

"Monsters don't last forever," she said. Both of them were fixated on the field, but neither of them were thinking about it. "Some last longer than others. The evilest ones tend to last the longest. Lynels, Hinoxes. But monster is a subjective term. The Sheikah did some horrible things. But the difference between them and the Yiga Clan is that the Sheikah tried to fix them, and the Yiga blamed their mistakes on others. If we want to be the Champions, we'll have to be the Sheikah. We'll make mistakes, we'll fight, but what matters is we pull through in the end."

"So…" he frowned. "You _do_ accept my apology, correct?"

She reached out and put a hand on his arm. "Yes."

"Excellent! Now to make Urbosa pay for what she did to my pristine feathers! Onward, Mipha!" He used his signature updraft and twirled dramatically into the sky, before turning to face her. "Actually, I'll be the only one punishing her, because _I'll_ be the first one there!"

"Ha! If you win, I'll eat a whole snail!" Even Mipha's challenge was gentle, but then she gracefully dived off the platform and hit the water with no splash whatsoever. She took off down the river, a pink shape darting off into the distance.

Revali could practically hear Urbosa's voice in his head. "So you aren't a complete pile of sandseal dung after all."


	2. Premonition

**Hello! I was bored again, so here you go. I decided that most of what happens in these little stories** ** _will_** **be part of a larger overall narrative. Nothing too fancy.**

Daruk had decided that Gerudo Desert was much, _much_ worse than Death Mountain.

Gone were the piles and piles of delectable rocks.

Gone was the music of bubbling lava.

Gone were the nights spent under the shadow of the mountain…

He shook his head. Best not to take that train of thought any further than there. But the place was still awful. The desert was bare as far as the eye could see except for an oasis (Kara Kara Bazaar, Urbosa had informed him) and the pale walls of Gerudo Town that looked like they rose out of the sand.

Worst of all, there was NO WAY to tell the path from the rest of the sand! All sand looks the same! They could've put some markers or something.

Daruk drug his feet as he hiked after Urbosa, who of course strode confidently like she owned the place.

She kinda did.

Gorons aren't used to walking. They CAN walk -they have legs after all, what else do you use them for?- but they're not the best at it. He was huffing and puffing in the thick, sweltering heat. Yet ANOTHER thing different from his home. Daruk was immune to the heat of the volcano, but even then, it was a sort of thin heat. This heat sat on the back of your neck and stayed there.

He focused on the swinging of Urbosa's red hair in front of him. It moved at a very methodical pace as she walked. Back and forth and back and forth.

The two were actually on a mission personally assigned by Princess Zelda, not to brag or anything. The other champions had been sent on similar missions, but noticeably 'Zelda's appointed knight' or whatever mouthful title he had, was never given a mission. It must be boring, following her around all the time. Daruk liked Zelda, but she talked a lot about ancient technology and hypotheses. She might as well have been speaking another language for Daruk.

They were searching for more of the shrines. Some were buried underground, and some were on the surface. Technically, _Urbosa_ had been assigned to this task, but she had asked to bring Daruk with her, with the explanation that he could travel through the sandstorms that almost always raged in the desert.

"But what about Revali?" Daruk had asked. They were sitting around the table in the dining hall. "He can fly over them and stuff."

Mipha had coughed quietly. Revali and Urbosa had locked eyes and were apparently having a mental contest to see who would look away first.

"Well, Daruk, Rito village is naturally very cold," Urbosa's voice was as flat as ever, but she never took her eyes off of Revali. "While your home on Death mountain has a similar heat to the desert. So it is my assumption that you will handle the climate better. Am I correct?"

Urbosa didn't usually use big words unless she was mad. "U-uh, yeah! Don't worry! I'm Mr. Resilient! You can count on me!"

Daruk was regretting his decision now. But in his defense, it's a little hard to say no to Urbosa. She was almost the unofficial leader of the Champions. She was the most levelheaded of the bunch, unlike Revali or Daruk, and she never let her emotions cloud her judgement, unlike Mipha.

Suddenly the Gerudo stopped in her tracks. Daruk admittedly wasn't paying that much attention, and it was only when he looked up that he stopped himself from slamming into her. She glanced back at him. Gerudo were naturally very tall, but Daruk towered over her. She was unfazed by this and gestured at her map.

"There's a shrine just outside the entrance. It's always been there, but I never thought much of it." She pointed to an X on her map. "And near the sandseal races, there's a sort of platform that we don't know what to do with, but it certainly looks like Sheikah technology." She scratched another X on the parchment with a sharpened piece of wood. The X was just to the south of the town.

"Are there any others that you know about?" Daruk asked.

She pointed to the northeast. What looked like a wall of sand barred their view in the distance. "I'm not sure, but scattered throughout the desert are statues of swordsmen. I've tried to follow them, but they lead in there. The sandstorm _does_ die down at night, but…" She smirked back at him. "We _are_ on a time limit."

"So we're going into the sandstorm." He said, scratching his head.

The Gerudo nodded plainly.

"And there's no way I can talk you out of it."

She nodded and chuckled. "You sound like Link. Toughen up, Goron! Let's go!"

An hour later, they were riding on top of Vah Naboris' back. There was a platform in front of the two humps. The head and neck were extended in front of them as they moved slowly in the direction of the sandstorm. Each step lurched Daruk's stomach, so he sat on the ground, clutching the rope that secured him to the Divine Beast.

Urbosa had the rope around her waist. She stood in front of him, most of her confidence lost as the beast tripped over something and she had to scramble to keep it upright. The faint screeching noises told him it was probably a camp of monsters. She got Naboris level again, and some of the intensity in her shoulders visibly disappeared. They were on a set course for the sandstorm. All they had to do was see where the shrine was and then mark it on the map. Unfortunately, Urbosa had no clue where it was.

"Hey Urbosa!" Daruk said, raising his voice to be heard over the moan of Naboris.

She sat down next to him, keeping a keen eye on the direction they were headed. "Yes, Daruk?"

"As much as it hurts me to admit," he said overdramatically, placing a huge hand over his forehead in a mock swoon. She snorted. "Revali _can_ travel a lot faster than me. And he does just fine in the heat. C'mon, man, my brain's not made up _entirely_ of rocks. Why didn't you take him instead?"

The small smirk on her face disappeared as quickly as a piece of meat thrown into a pack of wolves. She looked away from him at the sand for a moment. "Well, for one thing, he's a real son of a Bokoblin."

"Well," Daruk chuckled. "That's putting it bluntly."

"Honesty is the best policy," she said, shrugging.

"You're not still mad about the incident with Mipha, are you? That was, like, the _one time_ he apologized."

"We just don't get along, Daruk."

"Well, why give up convenience for a feud that makes no sense whatsoever? Do you two have some sort of ancient grudge?"

"It's for many reasons." She looked back at him and smiled slightly. "But you and I get along just fine, don't we?"

He shrugged. "That's my job, after all."

She frowned. "What?"

"I'm big and oafish and loveable. That's why I was chosen."

She was silent.

"The king and princess agreed that putting a bunch of people together from all over Hyrule would cause some drama. And instead of choosing the best warrior, they chose me. Although, don't get me wrong, I am good a smashing stuff," he added halfheartedly. "I guess they figured having a blindly loyal and friendly Goron who could solve arguments would fix that problem." He plastered a grin on his face. "I sure did a good job of that, didn't I?"

"Daruk, I didn't know…" She shook her head. "None of us meant for you to feel like that." She paused. "Not even Revali."

They both went silent for a while. Daruk stared at the sand dunes, how they would appear to rear up towards Naboris before shrinking back towards the ground. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost didn't see the approaching wall of sand until the full sound hit him.

He leaped to his feet, which is no easy task for a Goron. The sandstorm was taller than Naboris by far, and even as he stood the camel moaned as if bracing itself for impact.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Daruk yelled.

"Probably!" she shouted back, her voice ringing clear over the howling of the storm. Death Mountain's frequent earthquakes were loud, but they were nothing like this. The deep rumble was almost familiar, but this storm sounded very convincingly like it was screeching in pain. Urbosa was arranging herself against a pole. She climbed partway up with surprising dexterity. "Brace yourself!"

They entered the storm. It was like nothing Daruk had ever dealt with in his life. Sand blew from every direction, beating on him viciously even as he put up his barrier. The air was a deep foggy yellow color, and the ground could scarcely be seen.

He stumbled as the wind tried its hardest to push him off. He looked back for Urbosa, only to find her missing from her post. Daruk didn't get scared by much- y'know, not to brag or anything- but when he saw the barren pole, a deep sickening fear settled in his stomach. "Urbosa!' he called desperately to the wind.

There was no response. He glanced around. Her rope was still wound around a nearby column. There was no time to think. He struggled against the sand as he made his way over to the rope. It was dangling over the edge into the murkiness below them. He couldn't see the end of it, but he had to hope. As he grabbed the rope and started to drag it up, he felt a tug and a swing on it, like a fish biting the hook. He yanked on it, pulling it closer with all the strength he could muster. After the most stressful twenty minutes of his life, he could see a shape on the end of it.

Urbosa was swinging back and forth on the end of the rope. As he watched, she gave a harsh swing towards the shoulder of the divine beast. She braced herself against the stone and began to walk towards him on the wall. Her clothes swung around like they were part of the wind.

Daruk snapped out of his fascination to start tugging on the rope again. He couldn't tell if he was helping, but she didn't fall, so he would assume so. When she was about two feet away, he reached out and pulled her up by the arm.

"Are you okay?" He said, his voice cracking like rocks in an earthquake. "What happened?"

"I'm fine," she replied. "I was trying to find the statues."

"Did you see any?"

She frowned briefly for a reason he didn't understand before continuing. "No. It's all the same."

He started to say something, but while he was mid-word, Naboris lurched beneath them. It gave a huge moan and Daruk started to slide backwards.

Urbosa grabbed his arm and stood close to his side, but notably not touching him when she didn't have to. "Jump!" she yelled, before charging to the edge, tugging him behind her.

For half a second, the sand tore into them as they fell. Then red magic surrounded them. Daruk felt Urbosa's grip on his arm tighten as they plummeted.

He wondered how safe they would be just as they hit the ground and everything went black.


	3. Regrets

**Merry christmahhanakwanzika y'all! Bet YOU didn't expect me to publish anything else! Well to the two people who care, YOU WERE WRONG. Please enjoy!**

Urbosa woke up in Hyrule Castle.

Her head was spinning. She had long ago been trained to sleep lightly and always be prepared for a fight. But now, as she opened her eyes, the world looked like a melted collection of muted colors. For a minute she couldn't even figure out where she was, but then, eventually, her vision cleared and the hornet nest of her mind settled down.

She was in a room that she had never seen before, that consisted of a bed (which she was in), a table, a single, moonlit window, and a chair. In her grogginess, she thought that the chair was bloody, but after she blinked at it a few times she could make out the slight frame of Mipha, sound asleep with her trident propped up on the wall next to her. Urbosa felt a stab of guilt when she though about the healer working herself into exhaustion for her sake.

Silently, she shifted the blankets off of herself, and bit back a gasp of surprise. She was still wearing her armor, but she was badly bruised almost everywhere, and thick bandages were wound around one of her calves and both of her forearms. She couldn't see her face, but she imagined it wasn't exactly a pretty sight.

Moving as quietly as possible, Urbosa crept across the room to Mipha. She lifted the little Zora into a bridal carry with very little effort. She didn't even stir as Urbosa placed her on the bed and tucked the blankets up to her chin.

If you asked her, Urbosa would say that she was a stone-cold warrior of the Gerudo, trained for brutal armed combat. But now she could just imagine her battle-sisters laughing at her, even as she gazed affectionately at her fellow champion.

She gently adjusted the blanket before moving out of the room and into the dimly-lit hallway.

It would have been around midnight, but Urbosa knew her way around the castle well enough to navigate. Twice she strode past a guard, but both times they took one look at her, turned away, and pretended to be lacing their boots.

Really, she was looking for Daruk. She remembered falling rom a very high place and seeing red patterns flash in front of her just before she hit the ground. The Goron had saved her life. No, wait. Daruk _and_ Mipha had saved her life.

As she ran through all the scenarios in her head about what could have happened to him, she found herself in near-blinding moonlight and came to a sudden stop. She had wandered out into one of the courtyards, and now she found herself in a small meadow with a path, surrounded by high stone walls. The sky was blanketed with stars, and the moon was full and dazzlingly bright, enough that it lit up her surroundings. It reminded her of nights in the desert, when there was nothing in the way, nothing between you and the night sky.

In the silence, a tiny noise made her jump. She whipped around looking for its source, but then she heard it again and realized that it was much further away. A tiny _twang_ , like… like a bowstring.

She shook her head, making her way over to one of the ladders that lead up onto the walls. Surely not. But once she was up there, her shoes clicking softly on the stone, the rolling green hills of Hyrule field before her, she found the source.

The walls overlooked both Hyrule field and another courtyard, far below. This one was apparently used for trainees, and it contained a single doorway. The walls were lined with targets, training dummies, chests, and barrels, all scattered around and inconsistent. A silhouette stood in the middle, wielding a bow and turning in a circle, firing at the targets. _Twang._ A clean shot in the center of a target. _Twang._ Another perfect shot. Then they suddenly dropped their bow and clutched the arm that had been holding it, keeling over in obvious pain.

Revali. It was Revali.

"He won't let me heal him," said a soft voice behind Urbosa, almost a whisper. She didn't even have to turn around to know who it was.

"Are you sure you should be awake?" She asked Mipha, who came up beside her and leaned against the railing, looking down at the courtyard.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't have fallen asleep in the first place if I could help it." A hardness came into her voice now- an undertone as sharp as bone, but as Urbosa knew all too well, it was also just as brittle.

"What happened?" Urbosa asked. She deliberately kept her eyes off of Mipha. Her eyes were getting misty as she watched Revali. He was now slumped against a wall, staring up at the sky and gingerly massaging his wing.

"The way I heard it, the Gerudo went looking for you, and they found both you and Daruk passed out in the desert. He was alright, but you had lost a lot of blood." She paused for a moment. "He was half-conscious, but he had been applying pressure to the worst of your wounds." Her voice broke a little bit. "You… you probably wouldn't be standing here right now if not for him and Revali."

"What did Revali do?" She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, but listening to Mipha near tears made her want to break down into sobs herself.

"He… he had been flying to the desert to check on you and Daruk, since you were behind schedule. Apparently, he passed over where you were, and…well… they told him you probably weren't going to make it. I don't know exactly the reasoning behind it, but I know he crash-landed through the window of Princess Zelda's study, carrying you. He didn't say much, but I know that he brought you here from the desert."

Urbosa looked incredulously at her. "By himself?"

Mipha nodded and pursed her lips.

Urbosa turned away and looked down at Revali. She had always thought of him as the pompous type, and she doubted she was wrong, but apparently he was also the type to fly someone across Hyrule if it meant having a chance at saving their life. She suddenly felt bad for all the times she had insulted him, both out loud and in her head. She felt bad for underestimating Daruk. And she felt terrible for privately thinking of Mipha as weak. These people… her fellow Champions. They had been willing to risk their livelihoods for her. And what had she done for them?

Though she was a warrior, she knew nothing of personal sacrifice. She didn't know what it was like to put her life on the line for people outside the Gerudo.

But a tiny part of her, the part that she always kept tucked away, whispered the truth to her. All of them would know quite a bit about bigger sacrifices then that one day. And that day was coming sooner then any of them could ever expect.


End file.
